The Corps says a colonel killed himself. His brother calls the ruling a cover-up. Now, Congress wants to know the truth.

By Rod Hafemeister
Times staff writers

Thirteen years ago, Col. James E. Sabow was found dead behind his home at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Calif., a shotgun blast to his head, blood splattered across the backyard.

Navy and Marine officials soon after ruled the death a suicide, telling Sabow’s stunned family that the colonel, relieved as the air station’s assistant chief of staff days earlier, was distraught over allegations that he had misused government aircraft.

His family picked up the pieces of their lives and tried to move on. But the official explanation of his death never sat right with Sabow’s younger brother David, 63, a retired neurologist. Evidence at the scene indicated murder, not suicide, according to Sabow, who believes his brother was killed because of his knowledge of drug smuggling at El Toro and that the murder was covered up to protect others. Dr. Sabow even claims to know who killed his brother.

“The person was in the military and retired around the same time as the death,” Sabow said in a March 16 telephone interview from his home in Rapid City, S.D.

For 13 years, Sabow’s contention has been dismissed by the Marine Corps, the Pentagon and some lawmakers as B-movie fodder, nothing more than a conspiracy theory about what happened that January morning in 1991.

Then, Sabow learned that Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who chairs the powerful House Armed Services Committee, pushed the Pentagon to conduct an independent review of the case and had agreed to meet with him.

WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) Signs are now emerging that alleged Pentagon subway shooter John Patrick Bedell harbored strong hatred toward the US government and the armed forces, and questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Several Internet postings under the username “JPatrickBedell” seemed to indicate that Bendell was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his own California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide, but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up. Sabow’s family has maintained that he was murdered because he was about to expose covert military operations in Central America involving drug smuggling.

(AP Photo/WJLA-TV)

Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was named by Pentagon police as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack, in which he reportedly drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters’ subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons. The shootout lasted less than a minute, until he was shot and killed by return fire.

The Wikipedia user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”

That same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., involving allegations of cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Police said he’d had previous run-ins with the law, but found no immediate connection to terrorism. The attack, that superficially wounded two police officers, appears to be a case of “a single individual who had issues,” Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said in an early morning press conference Friday.

Keevill described Bedell as “very well-educated” and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit when he showed up at the secure Pentagon entrance about 6:40 p.m. and blended in with workers. He was concealing two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition.

When Bedell seemed to reach into his pocket for worker identification, he instead pulled out a gun, Keevill said. He died Thursday night from head wounds received when the two injured officers and another officer returned fire, Keevill said.

The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries.

Marine Col. James Sabow was found dead in 1991. Official investigations ruled his death a suicide, but members of his family disagree. The case has come up again because it appears that the gunman in the Pentagon shooting may have commented on the case online.

Peter Grier

Christian Science Monitor, 5 March 2010

Washington

Col. James Sabow was a Marine officer who was found dead in 1991 at his home at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Calif.

A number of official investigations have concluded that Sabow committed suicide. Members of his family have long insisted this to be untrue and say that Sabow was murdered because he knew of weapons- and drug-smuggling activities at the base.

The case is back in the news because of the shooting Thursday at the Pentagon by, according to authorities, John Patrick Bedell. Facebook postings by someone named John Patrick Bedell express sympathy with the Sabow family’s conclusion that an undiscovered conspiracy lay behind Sabow’s demise. (For more on the Pentagon shooting, click here.)

Records show that Sabow was relieved of his job as assistant chief of staff at the El Toro base in January 1991 due to allegations of misuse of government aircraft.

The following morning, his wife found him dead of a gunshot wound in the backyard of their home, with a shotgun nearby.

John Patrick Bedell knew a Marine fighter pilot, Col. Jim Sabow, had been murdered in a government cover-up.

ALEM, Ore.) – John Patrick Bedell must have had a lot on his mind as he went through the motions of a dead man walking. He knew this would be it; nobody opens fire near the Pentagon without falling in a hail of bullets.

It must be brutal in the last seconds, to enter the very last stage of life. Surely that is what he thought, and that had to be what Marine Colonel Jim Sabow thought, as he took his last breath in 1991.

This was on the mind of Bedell when he drove from Hollister, California to Washington D.C. to make his final stand. Bedell was extremely disturbed by the death of the Marine Colonel 19 years earlier, he viewed it as the final proof that the U.S. government is truly at least in part, a dirty and dishonest group.

Forensic evidence supports the murder of a Marine Colonel at MCAS El Toro in 1991 that was ruled a suicide.

(IRVINE, Calif.) – The murder of Colonel James Sabow is the story of the loss of our country’s moral compass.

Mounting evidence strongly indicates that “Thou shall not kill” was ignored to support the Contra War in Nicaragua and to protect the “butts” of those involved in shipping cocaine into the U.S. on former military aircraft to fund the war.

The overwhelming forensic evidence supports murder of a senior Marine Officer to prevent him from “telling all” at a court martial.

In an unexpected move, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) passed jurisdiction to the state of California almost 4 years ago. No action has been taken by Orange County where former Marine Corps Base El Toro, CA, is located.

19 years ago today, a Marine Corps Colonel was murdered at MCAS El Toro, California. His brother has relentlessly pursued the investigation of his death for all of these years. Guns, drugs, and a government cover-up make this a perfect crime.

Cover for “U.S. Marine Air Wings”, a history of Marine Corps Air Ops. Colonel James Sabow in Harrier.

(IRVINE, Calif.) – On January 22, 1991, Marine Colonel James E. Sabow, age 51, was found dead by his wife in the backyard of his quarters at MCAS El Toro, California. The Orange County Coroner ruled the death a suicide.

An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) reported suicide as the cause of death. However, on a review of the autopsy reports and other evidence, his family and other medical professionals and forensic experts strongly disagree.

Dr. David Sabow, a neurologist from Rapid City, South Dakota, continues the effort to clear his brother’s name, devoting much of the past 19 years and his personal financial resources to this cause.

Dr. Sabow provides support and convincing arguments that Colonel Sabow was clubbed to death in his backyard and then shot in the head with his own shotgun to suggest suicide. The motive for the murder was to stop Colonel Sabow from exposing criminal weapons and drug smuggling from and to military bases[1].

After hearing this story from another Marine veteran, I have to admit at first that I was skeptical and unconvinced of a government cover-up of the murder of a decorated Marine Corps officer. My view of government conspiracies involving the deaths of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, MKULTRA and even 911 is that they’re mostly grist for cheap paperback novels.

However, after reading the accounts of Colonel Sabow’s tragic death, now I’m not so sure.

Why would a Marine Colonel, happily married and the father of two children, with 28 years in the Marine Corps who had faced death countless times with 221 combat missions in an A-6 Intruder in Vietnam and no medical history of depression or PTSD take his own life and not even leave a suicide note?

Colonel Sabow, described by other officers who knew him as a straight-as-an-arrow Marine, objected to the illegal transit of drugs on unmarked C-130 aircraft.

Jim Sabow was a decorated Marine Colonel fighter pilot with everything to live for.

Relieved of his duties by Brigadier General Adams, Commanding General, MCAS El Toro, for some minor infraction of the rules and pressured to retire from the Marines, he told senior Marine officers that he would disclose all he knew about the shipment of guns for drugs at a courtmartial.

The unmarked C-130’s unloaded their drug cargo in the Marine Wing Support Group 37 area in the southwest quadrant of the base in the early morning hours. This is the most industrialized portion of the base. Coincidentally, I know the area well. As a young Marine in the 1960’s, I worked in one of the two huge maintenance hangars in MWSG-37. Even after 40 plus years, I still remember the distinctive sound of the C-130 turboprops keeping me awake in the early morning hours on duty watch in the hangar.

Marines were told to stay away from this portion of the base. David Hoffman reported that a Sgt. Robinson, a former El Toro Marine MP, and Captain Harries, the El Toro Provost Marshall, were told by Colonel Joseph Underwood, Chief of Staff, MCAS El Toro, on the subject of C-130’s landing at the base late at night to: ‘Keep your ass off the airstrip at night. Leave those airplanes alone. Don’t go near them. Don’t worry about them.’[2]

According to Dr. Sabow: “Colonel Sabow was Chief of Operations for Marine Air, Western Area. Shortly before his death, he learned of criminal activity by higher officials at El Toro Marine Air Base and others, involving illegal weapon shipments to Latin America, and drug shipments into various military bases on the return flights. He was intent on exposing these activities. The cover-up involves the DOD, the FBI and others.”

Guns for Drugs

Senator John Kerry (D-MA)

The involvement of the CIA in drug trafficking in Central America during the Reagan Administration as part of the Contra war in Nicaragua was the subject of several official and journalistic investigations since the mid-1980’s.

In 1987, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, led by Senator John Kerry, launched an investigation of contra-drug links:

”The logic of having drug money pay for pressings needs of the Contras appealed to a number of people who became involved in the covert war. Indeed, senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras’ funding problems.”

“As DEA officials testified last July before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Lt. Col Oliver North suggested to the DEA in June 1985 that $1.5 million in drug money carried aboard a plane piloted by DEA informant Barry Seal and generated in a sting of the Medellin Cartel and Sandinista officials, be provided to the Contras. While the suggestion was rejected by the DEA, the fact that it was made highlights the potential appeal of drug profits for persons engaged in covert activity.”

Courtesy National Security Archive

“Lotz [the head of the Costa Rican Air Force and personal pilot to two presidents] said that Contra operations on the Southern Front were in fact funded by drug operations. He testified that weapons for the Contras came from Panama on small planes carrying mixed loads which included drugs. The pilots unloaded the weapons, refueled, and headed north toward the U.S. with drugs.”[3]

In fact, there’s evidence that El Toro was used as a transient point for drug shipments into the United States. David Hoffman quotes testimony from a June 5, 1996 Defense Department Office of the Inspector General report: “Mr. [Gene] Wheaton alleged that MCAS El Toro was being used in support of a legal covert activity that had been undertaken by a U.S. intelligence agency under the cover of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program named ‘Screw Worm,’ allegedly a program to eradicate the screw worm in Mexico.”

The testimony continued, “Mr. Wheaton also alleged that the covert operation was actually legitimately providing weapons, ammunition and other material to the Government of Peru in their struggle against guerrilla forces know as the “Shining Path.” Mr. Wheaton further alleged that a number of individuals involved in this covert operation were concurrently conducting an illegal covert operation whereby they were smuggling additional weapons, ammunition and material to Peru. The individuals were allegedly selling the weapons, ammunition and material to the Shining Path as well as to the Government of Peru, for money and narcotics. The money and narcotics were then allegedly smuggled back into the United States and air dropped at remote locations on military installations in the western part of the United States… Mr. Wheaton further alleged that this operation continued until approximately the time of Col. Sabow’s death.”[4]

So in effect, the motive for Colonel Sabow’s murder was to prevent him from disclosing the use of former military aircraft to illegally ship guns for drugs. This all sounds too familiar. It all goes back to the green. Based on the information reported by Dr. Sabow, David Hoffman and others on the internet, there’s enough evidence for a motive to murder.

Forensic Evidence Supports Murder

I’m not a trained forensic expert or even an amateur ‘Sherlock Holmes’, but the evidence to support murder as presented by Dr. David Sabow appears overwhelming[5].

In my view, some of the damning evidence supporting the murder of this officer are:

1. Head Contusion: The body of Colonel Sabow showed “an orange-sized contusion existed behind the right ear and extended downward to the neck.” The autopsy showed a massive blood clot…within that swollen area and between the scalp and skull. Skull x-rays were taken and showed a large depressed skull fracture under the blood clot with the fragment pressed inward over 3/4 in. deep. Since the victim was alleged to have shot himself in the mouth, any displaced fragments should have been blown outward not inward.” And, “X-rays showed that there were no shotgun pellets nor bone spicules within the blood clot.” The conclusion was “the swelling (contusion) on the back of the head and the depressed skull fracture is characteristic of an external blunt force applied to the right occipital area of the skull. It is inconsistent with an intra-oral shotgun wound.” In short, Colonel Sabow was hit on the head by someone intent on killing him or at the very least knocking him unconscious.

2. Skull X-Rays: Skull x-rays taken at the Orange County Medical Examiner’s facility show a “large depressed occipital skull fracture.” The x-rays were reviewed by university medical specialists. “A conference at the University of Minnesota consisting of three Professors of Neuroradiology and three Professors of Neurosurgery evaluated these x-rays and corresponding autopsy photos. Their conclusions were: the fracture was from blunt force inflicted to the right posterior skull; the fracture could not have occurred as a result of the gunshot; from a review of the photos, it was apparent that the blunt force occurred prior to death.”

3. Fingerprints: There are no fingerprints on the 12 gauge Ithaca shotgun found under the body of Colonel Sabow. As related by Dr. Sabow, the “gun was stored in a scabbard-style gun case on a shelf in a vacant bedroom.” If Colonel Sabow shot himself, he would have had to remove the gun from the scabbard, carry the gun through the house from the garage to the backyard, place the gun on a counter in the garage, open a cabinet and remove a box filled with ammunition and place it on the counter; select two shells from one of boxes; break open the shotgun and load the shells into the chamber; close the shotgun and place it on the counter; replace the box of ammunition in the cabinet and reclasp the cabinet; carry the gun across the yard; place the butt of the shotgun on the ground and grasp the barrel with his left hand while reaching down with his right to depress the trigger. All of these activities would have left Colonel Sabow’s fingerprints on the shotgun. A dead man doesn’t wipe clean the weapon used to kill himself. The only reasonable conclusion is that Colonel Sabow did not pull the trigger of the shotgun.

4. Blood Filled Lungs: the autopsy report, in part, stated that “no intact brainstem could be identified” and the right lung contained “large amount of aspirated blood…hemorrhage more marked on the right side…lumens of trachea and bronchii have large amount of aspirated blood.” Dr. Sabow observed that “it is absolutely impossible to breathe without an intact brainstem. Not even a gasp! This victim was not only brain dead but, was actually, “brain absent”. Furthermore, there was “disintegration of the superior end of the spinal cord.” The victim could not have aspirated blood after being shot! The conclusion was the Colonel Sabow had to “have been very actively breathing blood while he was still alive and, obviously, before he was shot, for death would have been instantaneous after the shot.”

5. Blow to Head: Dr. Jack Feldman, Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the Department of Physiologic Science at UCLA concluded: “Col. Sabow was rendered unconscious or immobile by a blow to the head that fractured the base of the skull, causing bleeding into the pharynx. Breathing continued after the injury, aspirating blood into the lung. At sometime later, a shotgun was placed in the mouth and triggered (by another party), causing death and obscuring any evidence of prior injury. I conclude that the evidence does not support… a self-inflicted gunshot wound”.

There’s no statute of limitations on murder. However, no grand jury will ever hear any of the forensic evidence supporting homicide.

We don’t know the names of the killers. David Hoffman provides the names of senior Marine Corps officers connected with Colonel Sabow’s murder. No U.S. Attorney has pursued this investigation. According to Dr. Sabow, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department showed no interest in this case. The crime was committed on a U.S. military base in Southern California. There are no witnesses. The perfect crime. Hardly. But, the good guys don’t always win. Take a few moments today to pray for Colonel Sabow and his family.

Bob O’Dowd is a former U.S. Marine with thirty years of experience on the east coast as an auditor, accountant, and financial manager with the Federal government. Half of that time was spent with the Defense Logistics Agency in Philadelphia. Originally from Pennsylvania, he enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 19, served in the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Marine Aircraft Wings in 52 months of active duty in the 1960s. A graduate of Temple University, Bob has been married to Grace for 31 years. He is the father of two adult children and the grandfather of two boys. Bob has a blog site on former MCAS El Toro at mwsg37.com. This subject is where Bob intersected with Salem-News.com. Bob served in the exact same Marine Aviation Squadron that Salem-News founder Tim King served in, twenty years earlier. With their combined on-site knowledge and research ability, Bob and Tim and a handful of other ex-Marines, have put the contamination of MCAS El Toro on the map. The base is highly contaminated with TCE, trichloroethelyne.

A Former CIA Pilot Says Secret Flights To El Toro Could Explain A Marine Officer’s `Suicide’

By Nick Schou

When we first spoke, a decade ago, the fear in his voice — the staccato pace, the tremor — was unmistakable.

“I can’t talk to you,” he said. “This is all classified.”

He answered just one question: if he told me what he knew, he’d go straight to federal prison for violating U.S. national security laws.

Then he hung up the telephone.

Two weeks ago, I tracked the man to his home in rural Pennsylvania. This time, he didn’t hang up on me. The terror in his voice was gone, replaced by the cheerful nonchalance that maybe just comes with being 69 years old and knowing that your kids have finished college, you’re well into retirement, and it’s too late for anyone to ruin your life for talking to a reporter about matters that powerful people would rather keep secret.

He laughed when he recalled our conversation a decade ago. He apologized for not answering my questions. He asked me what I wanted to know.

Over the course of the next several days, the man told me his life story.

* * *

William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee was a CIA contract pilot. He worked where the agency sent him. That meant that he ran guns to Fidel Castro in the 1950s, and then, when Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, Plumlee ran guns to Castro’s opponents. In the 1980s, he flew guns again, in and out of military bases including Orange County’s El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, March Air Force Base in Riverside, and Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The weapons were destined for the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras, a right-wing army aiding the agency’s war on communism.

Ever since Colonel James Sabow perished 14 years ago in the back yard of his house at the since-closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Dr. David Sabow has tried to prove the military murdered his brother. His efforts finally paid off in September 2003, when the House Armed Services Committee ordered the Secretary of Defense, who had already investigated the death, to authorize an outside probe that—at Dr. Sabow’s request—would rely on forensic experts with no ties to the military.

After more than a year of sifting through the evidence, Seattle-based forensic expert Jon J. Nordby concurred with the previous investigations and concluded that Colonel Sabow died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound on Jan. 22, 1991. But Nordby did find evidence of something Dr. Sabow had suspected all along: somebody behind-the-scenes was trying to manipulate the evidence and cover up the truth.

The only problem: that person, according to Nordby, wasn’t a high-placed Pentagon official, but rather Dr. Sabow himself.

Dr. Sabow’s suspicions began immediately after his brother died. A neurologist who lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, he took issue with the original Orange County Coroner’s report, which, while finding Sabow shot himself, also discovered a large amount of aspirated blood in Sabow’s lungs. He theorized that it would have been impossible for someone who had just shot himself in the head to have taken several deep breaths.

Dr. Sabow also claimed that autopsy photographs included in that investigation show a depressed skull fracture at the base of his brother’s skull—a wound he says proves someone hit his brother with a blunt object, rendering him unconscious before placing the shotgun in the colonel’s mouth and pulling the trigger. Sabow also took issue with the fact that the only sizable spray of blood on his brother’s body coated a patch of his left forearm and palm, ending abruptly in a neat line across his skin. This suggested (to Dr. Sabow, at least) his brother was lying on the ground on his right side when the shotgun went off.

His doubts about the medical evidence were fueled by his suspicions regarding the military’s explanation for why Colonel Sabow committed suicide: just days before his death, he had been suspended for illegally using aircraft at El Toro. Dr. Sabow says his brother was so incensed at being reprimanded by his superiors that he had threatened to uncover far-more-serious offenses taking place at the base. Furthermore, Dr. Sabow claimed, Navy investigators told him an eyewitness saw an unidentified person remove a club from the crime scene and that a lawn chair was placed over the body to make it appear that Colonel Sabow was sitting down when he shot himself.

Dr. Sabow also says Marine Corps officials threatened him and other members of the Sabow family in a meeting shortly after his brother’s death. Based on that, he sued the Marine Corps at the Ronald Reagan courthouse in Santa Ana but lost the case in January 2000, when a judge ruled that Sabow’s attorney, crusading lawyer Daniel Sheehan, had wasted courtroom resources trying to prove a vast drug-smuggling conspiracy at El Toro (see “Who Killed Col. James Sabow?” Feb. 18, 2000).

The latest official investigation into Sabow’s death made no effort to address such issues, focusing instead on the medical evidence. Among other things, Nordby wrote that gas from the shotgun blast explained the presence of oxygen bubbles in the blood found in Colonel Sabow’s lungs and that the shotgun’s recoil effect was responsible for the fracture at the base of his skull—not blunt-force trauma. While Nordby did criticize the Navy’s original crime-scene report for failure to preserve evidence and incomplete crime-scene photography, he concluded that none of the medical evidence cited by Sabow proved anything other than that his brother killed himself.

While the bulk of his 62-page report focused on the medical evidence, Nordby did dedicate an entire chapter to Dr. Sabow. “I received absolutely no pressure to reach any particular conclusion in this work from my employers in the [Defense Department], from the House Armed Services Committee members, or from any member or official from any branch of the U.S. Armed services,” Nordby wrote in his report. Meanwhile, Nordby continued, Dr. Sabow—who identified himself to Nordby as his “co-investigator”—refused to provide him with his brother’s Ithaca 12-gauge shotgun for forensic tests yet repeatedly tried to browbeat him into writing that Colonel Sabow had been struck unconscious with a blow to the back of the head before being murdered with his own shotgun.

“Of course, I felt insulted, manipulated and consequently very angry at this unjustifiably arrogant, unbecoming, unprofessional, single-minded and methodologically abhorrent fanaticism,” Nordby wrote. “For the record, I do not believe that Dr. David Sabow is capable of the independent rational detachment necessary to appreciate medical and scientific facts concerning his brother’s death—especially if those medical and scientific facts point toward a conclusion differing in any way from his own preordained, received and revered position that his brother was murdered.”

In a rebuttal to Nordby’s report that he provided to the Weekly,Dr. Sabow reiterated his belief that his brother was murdered and said he refused to provide the shotgun to Nordby after he became convinced Nordby was only going to reaffirm the finding of suicide. He believes the latest inquiry is just the most recent phase of a 15-year cover-up. “The cover-up involves the [Defense Department], the FBI and others,” Dr. Sabow stated. “This is perhaps not the first time the U.S. government has failed to seek justice for its citizens. But Colonel Sabow’s murder and the subsequent cover-up by high military officials should be brought to light, if not for Colonel Sabow’s family to receive justice, then for the American citizenry who deserve much better from their officials.”

In a later message, he vowed, “I do not intend to quit.”

“Please understand that I am not convinced my brother was murdered. I KNOW that he was murdered, and so does everyone else. You are looking at one of the biggest cover-ups that has ever occurred in this country because if they told the truth, more than you can imagine would come tumbling down.”

El Toro was on high alert, but all was quiet on F Street, a narrow lane of modest ranch houses for base officers and their families. One of those officers was Colonel James E. Sabow, a 51-year-old, no-nonsense, straight-as-a-ramrod Marine Corps jet pilot.